In Search Of Other-Worldly Truths

From: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2004 11:01:37 -0500
Fwd Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2004 11:01:37 -0500
Subject: In Search Of Other-Worldly Truths
Source: The Taipei Times - Taiwan
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2004/02/15/2003098897
Sunday, Feb 15, 2004,Page 18
In Search Of Other-Worldly Truths
Whether it's UFOs or lost underwater cities, Taiwan's fringe
scientific societies hope to make monkeys out of their doubters
over the coming year and prove once and for all that the truth
is really out here
By Gavin Phipps
Staff Reporter
At 5:30pm on Jan 4, 2004, Taipei's Steven Lai was standing with
his camcorder near the Shin Kong Tower when he caught sight of a
triangular object in the skies above him. Making use of his top
of the line digital recorder Lai filmed what he believed to be a
UFO circling the skies above Taipei.
Lai sent his footage to the Taiwan Ufology Society (TUFOS,
previously known as the Taiwan Unidentified Flying Objects
Association - for confirmation as to whether or not he was
witness to a UFO sighting. He hadn't. According to experts, the
clumsy and slightly out of focus footage, which shows a
triangular entity with red and green markings in flight, is a
man made object.
"We studied it for some time, but the object was too close to
the buildings to have been a UFO," said TUFOS President James
Huang (???). "We reckon that what he saw was probably a plastic
bag or some other small man made object that had been picked up
by the wind and was blowing through the air."
While Lai's footage wasn't this year's first Taiwan UFO
sighting, hundreds of people still trawl the skies with high-
powered telescopes daily hoping to catch a glimpse of the
unexplained. They send their reports, whether credible or not,
to TUFOS. Now boasting 500 members, the group is the nation's
sole Ufology society and is a sorting house for dozens of
reports that come in annually regarding UFO sightings in Taiwan.
Since Taiwan's first officially recorded sighting of a UFO by
Tsai Chang-hsien) on March 5, 1956, there have been upward of 54
feasible sightings and countless false sightings of unidentified
flying objects cruising the skies above Taiwan. All these
reports have landed on the desk of Ho Hsien-jung, TUFOS' chief
investigator.
Affectionately known as "Ufo Ho" to his friends and colleges,
the articulate Ufologist spent months wading through pages of
reports filed by Taiwanese citizens over the years. Realizing
the information his organization had gathered was wasted sitting
in his computer, Ho decided to publish a complete record of
Taiwan's UFO sightings.
"There's certainly no shortage of books touching on UFO
sightings, but there was nothing specific to Taiwan," he said.
"No one had ever set out to catalog the nation's UFO sightings
and publish all the written and photographic evidence in a
single publication before."
It took Ho almost a year to sift through information and contact
and re-interview the people who had reported the sightings, to
ensure there were no discrepancies. Entitled On the Trail of UFO
Sightings, (the book, which was released last week, details 54
of the most important UFO sightings ever to have been reported
in Taiwan, as well as the countless sightings TUFOS had been
informed of in China.
The results of Ho's book point to a drop in UFO sightings in
Taiwan in recent years, with only two recorded incidents taking
place last year, and an increase in the number of sightings on
the opposite side of the Taiwan Strait.
"Obviously there are more people in China than anywhere else, so
I'm not surprised at the increase in sightings there. The recent
drop in UFO sightings can be put down to several things," he
said. "There are now more diseases than ever before, and
anything landing here would be susceptible to falling victim to
them. And secondly, I think the military use of lasers means
that fewer extra-terrestrials now dare to enter the Earth's
atmosphere in case they are shot down."
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